No Computer

I can’t remember the last time I spent more than a few days away from
the computer. Last week I went on vacation and decided to take the
opportunity to do an experiment in being offline.

Bracketing

There’s a concept called bracketing a problem. The idea is that in a
world of uncertainty, we will get more knowledge by asking “what would
be too little?” and “what would be too much?” than by simply asking
“what is the right amount?” Once we have found the limits, we have
bracketed the problem and we know where we stand 1.

Hypothesis

Before starting this experiment, the question I had was: What will it
feel like to not be connected and using screens? As the week went by,
I realized that it didn’t make sense to treat work and leisure with
the same hypothesis. My initial question forked into two
semi-retrofitted hypotheses:

I won’t hit the lower bound for leisure.

I will hit the lower bound for work.

Methodology

First, this was not a controlled experiment. The whole week I spent
offline was away from home, and the main purpose of the trip was
leisure.

The rules were quite simple:

No computer.

No smartphone except as necessary (minimal communication).

The experiment started Sunday/Monday at midnight and stopped the
following Monday.

Results

I didn’t bring a computer so it was impossible to use one. Phone I had
turned off all the time except for two separate one hour periods when
I periodically coordinated meeting up with someone. My iPhone had more
than half its battery left at the end of the week, without charging
it.

What follows are notes and observations from the experiment:

Social side-effects: Mostly surprise and a bit of initial “how do
we talk with you then”.

Leeching: Asked my S.O. for the time and to set alarm a few times,
which she did with her phone. Strictly speaking this is still being
dependent on phones.

Limitation: At the time of the experiment I had no position of
responsibility that made me susceptible to urgent emails. This
would’ve complicated matters.

Navigation: This wasn’t an issue since I either looked up things
in advance or was already familiar with the area.

Using other people’s devices: I showed people how to use Airbnb and
Twitter. Looked up a movie. None of these things were necessary, and I
could have been harder on the no devices rule, but it was a very
different feeling, as it was strictly in a social goal-oriented
setting. Each task took less than ten minutes.

What I didn’t do or miss: I didn’t check email, Twitter, HN or any
other social media, news, nor any IM except for coordination on two
people on two separate occasions.

On working: There were two types of work I wanted to keep doing:
coding and writing up this experiment. Both were difficult to do
because of the lack of a feedback loop. as well as not being able to
do targeted research.

How does the lack of small dopamine kicks in response to news affect
your well-being over time? (by request): This experiment wasn’t
controlled enough to measure any such effect.

How do you resist the urge to Google information related to
something you read on paper? (by request): Not a problem since it
wasn’t possible. If a text required me to do research, I just
shifted to reading other things (which was fine for leisure). I used
a physical dictionary to look up a few words.

In summary, I didn’t hit the lower bound for leisure, and for my work
(primarily programming) I did hit it.

Conclusion

I was surprised at how few things I missed. At some point I would
probably begin to miss being in the loop, being able to go down Google
and Wikipedia walks, and talking to people from all over the world,
but I didn’t hit that point during a week.

I divided the initial question into one of work and leisure. Leisure I
barely missed at all, as I just read books and did non-computer
things. Work was different: without being able to look up things and
code things on a screen - which, unlike mathematics, is the natural
medium code is created in - I found myself unable to work on any
programming. Initially my ambition had been to do some coding on a
legal pad, but this proved to be difficult. It is possible this is
something that can be exercised, but probably only for small,
self-contained problems.

It was also easier than expected. I suspect this to a large degree
depends on the state-dependent or context-dependent memory effect. It
is much harder to remove old habits than to form new ones in a new
environment. It is also much easier to just cut computers out
completely than to use them only for dedicated tasks. Back in the real
world, where we use computers every day, there’s a spillover effect -
when we are working at a computer it’s easy to get into leisure-mode,
at least temporarily. This is a struggle that a lot of people
recognize, and it’s not a straightforward problem.

When I talked to fellow programmers about this experiment I was
surprised by how positive they were about this. It’s as if they all
secretly wish they could sneak away from the computer and just be away
for a while.

Maybe not being connected all the time will develop into a form of
luxury. Instead of asking when the last time someone travelled or took
a vacation, the question we will ask in the future is: when was the
last time you spent a week offline?